SMU’s celebration starts Friday

Southern Methodist University is launching a four-year celebration of its first 100 years at a ceremony Friday at 1:30 p.m. in its main quadrangle.

I can’t chronicle SMU’s initial century in one column, so I decided to highlight some serious moments and some of the lighter fare, all in support of the conclusion expressed by SMU spokeswoman Patti LaSalle:

“SMU has come a long way in the past century, rising from a small college on the North Texas prairie to a university of national and international stature with nearly 11,000 students from all 50 states and more than 90 countries enrolled in seven degree-granting schools. Nearly 112,000 SMU alumni include local, national and global leaders in diverse fields of endeavor.”

According to Margaret Hyer, daughter of SMU’s first president, Robert Hyer, one Sunday in 1912, after the Methodist Educational Commission had selected Dallas over Fort Worth, her father drove wife and daughter “out over the narrow dirt road through fields of waving Johnson grass. On a small incline, [my father] stopped the car and said, ‘This is where Dallas Hall will stand.’ My mother burst into tears, saying, ‘You’ve lost your mind. You can’t build a university in the middle of this prairie.’ On the way home no one spoke a word.”

When you hear that Dallas and the Methodist Church joined in partnership to establish SMU, it may occur to you to wonder why the partnership wasn’t with University Park and Highland Park. Ann Abbas, who works with LaSalle, said that’s because Highland Park wasn’t incorporated until 1913 and University Park, where SMU is located, wasn’t incorporated until 1924.

GI Bill’s impact

Since I’m a member of the Greatest Generation — hey, who am I to argue with Tom Brokaw? — I wondered about the impact of the GI Bill on SMU after World War II.

It turns out that Marshall Terry, professor emeritus of English and (for transparency’s sake) a personal friend of mine, covered that subject in his book, From High on the Hilltop. There was such a post-World War II student enrollment explosion that SMU had to set aside an area for temporary housing that was called “Trailerville.”

World War II veterans enrolling under the GI Bill boosted SMU’s enrollment to 11,126 in 1947, a number that wouldn’t be topped until 2003.

I asked Terry to give us his views of SMU’s presidents over the years. As you can see, each contributed in a specific way.

Founding president Hyer, who served from 1911 to 1920, was “the one who brought this vision of a great university to be built on a sea of Johnson grass outside a young, still-frontier city. In addition, Hyer established a grand design for the campus with buildings in Georgian style, which amazingly has been followed through the years,” Terry said.

Umphrey Lee was president from 1939 to 1954. “Lee truly turned SMU around, from a prairie college to a real university. Lee’s chief intention was to increase SMU’s academic prestige, its sense of itself as a university.”

Terry served for a time as administrative assistant to Willis M. Tate, who was president from 1954 to 1972. “Tate supported academic freedom for the faculty and, despite heavy criticism, stood behind a student group’s invitation to an avowed Communist to speak on campus, maintaining that ‘the truth is affirmed and the fallacious exposed in a free enterprise of ideas.’”

A. Kenneth Pye served from 1987 to 1994 and came to SMU in the aftermath of the scandal that gave the football team the so-called death penalty from the NCAA. With a no-nonsense approach, he “restored the integrity of the athletic program and its relationship to the academic program and restored the public’s confidence in the university,” Terry said.

SMU’s current president, R. Gerald Turner, has been in office since 1995.

“Turner reaffirmed SMU’s partnership with Dallas,” Terry said.

“He has provided leadership for the Campaign for SMU that exceeded its goal by raising $542 million from 1997 to 2002 and for a $750 million campaign launched in 2008, largest in the university’s history, which to date has raised $489 million. With the support of trustees, he led SMU’s acquisition of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.”

Taking stock

SMU alums Carl Sewell and Ruth Altshuler are co-chairs of the Second Century Celebration Organizing Committee.

“As a longtime member of the SMU board of trustees, I have witnessed progress through the years, but never at the level and breadth of what we are experiencing today,” Altshuler said.

“A centennial allows us collectively to take stock, to take pride in our quality today and to reaffirm our even greater aspirations for the future,” Sewell added.

“The university’s founders would indeed be proud of SMU’s rise in the national rankings as well as the growth in quality of students, faculty and curriculum. We’re ready for a second century of achievement.”

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About Robert Miller

Something people don't know about me: I literally was born on top of the Barnett Shale. (I was born at home in a two-room block house in Parker County.)Most unforgettable experience on the job: Covering the Kennedy assassination (as assistant city editor).The greatest challenge covering business in North Texas: Especially since World War II, Dallas has been like a new frontier, where fortunes and reputations are made at mile-a-minute speed.

Hometown: Dallas since the age of 2; that is, roughly since 1925-26, since my birthday is in late November.

Education: Sunset High School, then freshman and sophomore years at North Texas Agricultural College (a junior branch of Texas A&M at the time). Undergraduate journalism and English degrees at University of Missouri and master’s degree in government at Columbia University in New York (beginning at Mizzou in 1946, all on the GI bill).